Chapter 14: What the Orchard Cost

I stood on Kellan's porch in his coat and nothing else, and my mother held up the deed.

The paper shook in the wind.

Nobody in the yard said a word.

Kellan came out of the house behind me, in trousers and a bare chest, and put himself at my shoulder.

The pack saw it.

Every one of them saw exactly what we had done in that house, and I did not care.

"Where is my father?" I asked.

"Here," a guard said.

Two of them walked my father out of the crowd with his wrists tied in front of him.

He had not slept.

His eyes were swollen, and he could not meet mine.

"We took them at the orchard gate," the guard said. "They were burning papers."

My mother turned her head.

"We were burning the leases," she said evenly.

"The old ones, with Aldric's name on them. I wanted nothing of his left on our land."

"After fifteen years," I said.

"After fifteen years."

She looked at the pack.

"I am Brigid's mother," she said.

"I let my daughter be thrown out of her home, and I told her she was dead to me."

"I knew why she was silent. I knew what it cost her."

A low growl ran through the yard.

"My other daughter was killed, and I took the price for her body and put it in a drawer."

Someone spat on the ground in front of her.

She did not wipe her face when it hit her skirt.

"I will take whatever you give me," she said. "I do not ask for mercy."

"Good," said a man in the crowd. "You won't get it."

"Burn her house," said a woman.

"Strip them of the name."

"Put them out the way she was put out."

The noise rose and rose.

I felt Kellan's body go tight as the whole pack looked at him to give the word.

I put my hand on his arm.

"It isn't yours," I said. "Don't."

He looked down at me.

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